Nobody likes to fail. But women take failure particularly hard—studies have shown that women are so averse to failure that they don't apply for jobs unless they feel 100 percent qualified. This hesitancy is understandable: When they do fail, women are judged more harshly than their male counterparts. Men, on the other hand, throw veritable failure parties; they're more likely to embrace "What doesn't kill you…" and plow ahead.

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This week on ELLE.com, we've asked women to share their stories of failure. Not the kind of failure that led to some great business idea—just failure, plain and simple. We hope to shift the narrative about failure (it's okay! it happens!), or at the very least chip away at the idea that failure should be shameful or a secret. So here's to failing, loudly and proudly. Read more here.

A fellow entrepreneur recently asked me: "What does it feel like to be so successful?" I was dumbfounded. Yes, I have poured my everything into starting Julep, a social beauty company that is all about creating fun and fearless experiences for women to share. Yes, we are backed by some of the world's best venture capital firms, and I have worked for incredible companies like Starbucks and BCG. And yet. I spend most of my time failing.

I am a failure virtuoso. I have made painful mistakes on hard decisions like hiring, and I have made countless more mistakes on everyday decisions like signing a lease, picking furniture, or putting up signage. The simple math of life is that the more new things I try, the more times I find myself failing.

And there's no doubt about it—failure sucks. It hurts bad, smells bad, feels bad, tastes bad. It often makes me want to puke.

Unfortunately, attempting to avoid failure is impossible (and tortuously painful). I've learned that I can't control whether failure happens. Trying to avoid it pushes me dangerously towards the false god of perfectionism and results in isolated paralysis. It's a crazy downward spiral in which my eye is drawn to seeing more and more failures the more I try to escape them.

Prepare for failure

When you start a company, it is your job to ask the world for what you need to make your vision a reality. And as it turns out, when you ask a lot of people for a lot of things, you will be told no a lot. For me, some critical advice from [Starbucks CEO] Howard Schultz was important to my sanity during the critical start-up fundraising stage. Unlike the Silicon Valley bros who are always "killing it" and trying to figure out what to do with all the money that is being forced upon them, Howard was honest when he talked about what it was like when he got started. When I asked him for advice as I was leaving Starbucks to start Julep, he sat back in his chair and said, "My first stores took me twice as long and cost twice as much as I'd first planned." In his book, Pour Your Heart Into It, he talks about how many no's he had to move through to get the yeses he needed to open the first Starbucks stores. In the early days of Julep, this nugget of reality became my life support. The answer to "How can you keep going when you're told 'No,' 'That's dumb,' and 'That will never work'?" was surprisingly simple for me. I kept an Excel spreadsheet called "Howard" and tracked my no's versus his. Here's where we both netted out in raising our first million:

On the one hand, I had been rejected 58 times, which was just a little ego bruising. On the other hand, I was doing better (in this regard) than Howard Schultz, and that was pretty energizing. The key is that I expected literally hundreds of no's on the way to the yeses I needed. By making the failures along the way part of the expectation, I was able to view rejection as an inevitable part of the process.

Share failure—without judgment

Failure that doesn't see the light of day turns into gut-wrenching shame. In her latest book, Rising Strong, Brené Brown advises us to create and tell our stories of failure—first to ourselves and then ideally to a nonjudgmental friend who is in your corner. The only thing worse than failing is failing alone. The first step in turning failure into a lesson is to examine it, poke it, prod it, and try to understand it. When I'm going through this, I try hard to remember to treat myself the same judgment-free way I try to listen to my girlfriends who when they call me to talk about a challenge. n interviewing candidates for various roles at Julep, I am alarmed when someone says, "I'm my own harshest critic." Why? The world will criticize you and harsh on you enough. You don't need to pile on. Wrapping your arms around a mistake or failure in a balanced, supportive way is the first step to making it into something helpful.

Look for measurable changes you can make next time

A common misconception is that failure is just a lesson in disguise—you just have to look at it differently to see that. WRONG! Turning failure into a lesson isn't about changing the angle at which you're viewing the event—it's much harder work than that. The key question to ask is, What can I do better next time? Notice I said, "next time"—not, What should I have done differently back then? You can't time travel, but you can create a better next time. One surprise I've realized in my four decades of life is that there is always a next time. It might not be with the same person, or the same company, but you will constantly be presented with situations where you can improve upon your last reaction. Sometimes at work I am explicit about this—I ask for do-overs and I've never been turned down. When my first reaction is not one I'm proud of, instead of engaging in shame and blame, I simply say, "Can I have a do-over"? I've been known to leave the room and come back in with a better, more thoughtful response than I had the first time around. The key is to reflect (see tip #2 above!) and recognize the pattern so you can see that it's a situation you've been in before, and then recall what you decided you wanted to do differently next time. The more detailed you are with yourself about how you'd handle the situation differently, the more likely you are to see it and try this new strategy when life presents you with the opportunity.

As a parent, leader, and CEO, I am so passionate about the need to embrace discomfort in order to grow. Working through failure is hard and uncomfortable, and takes a lot of work. But as far as I know, it's the only way to grow.